Monthly Archives: August 2012

A representative of the revolutionary anti-colonial struggle in Zimbabwe speaks at a gathering of Native radicals at Pine Ridge

As a Native revolutionary driven web project The Speed of Dreams is encouraging all of its readers to join our calling out of Mohawk Nations News for their recent shocking and shameful display of anti-Afrikan racism in the article Obama, Buffalo Soldier Chief. To quote their own website, “Mohawk Nation News service began during the Mohawk/Oka crisis of 1990 by providing updates on the resistance.” From these roots MNN has grown into an internationally recognized source of critical news about not only the Mohawk people, but other Native nations as well.

However, that is not to say that MNN has been perfect. For some time while we here have been re-posting their articles, we have also been concerned with their promotion of globalist conspiracy theories which ultimately have their roots in the libertarian and neo-fascist wings of the North American far-right. However, while this has always been a concern, it has never been an insurmountable obstacle. That is why TSoD has been so shocked by the content of the article.

The article begins fine, as a criticism of the Buffalo Soldiers, Africans (mostly former slaves) who fought against Native peoples for the expanding United States settler empire in the period following the inter-settler civil war. This is a history we must be critical of, just as we must be critical of those Native nations who for this-or-that reason decided to side with the expanding settler empire. We must be critical of this history because we must be critical of all attempts by imperialist White power to set different oppressed nations against one another and be ever vigilant for any and all future attempts. Read the rest of this entry →

Firstly, apologies to readers for the lack of posts recently. I have started a new job and am also gearing up for surgery, so I haven’t had the free time I would like in order to post.

Anyway, onto the business at hand. I am making this quick post today in order to jot down some initial thoughts of mine on the controversy surrounding the recent allegations that famed Asian-American Black Panther Party member Richard Aoki was in fact a government informant the entire time. I posted the article which first hit the web with the news with the caveat to take it with a grain of salt. Since then have stayed silent because I feel it is far to early to judge the allegations as the article (and the book it was promoting) only came out this week. It is most certainly the case that no-one has taken the time to do the kind of in-depth research necessary in order to refute OR support them.

However, many folks around the North American leftist internet community have obviously felt that it is not necessary to do said investigation in order to stand up and say with total confidence that Aoki was NOT an agent. While I still would consider myself not particularly swayed in either direction, I find myself not endorsing or posting any of these defences of Aoki because I have some particular concerns about the whole case that I feel have either not be dealt with well, honestly or at all by others commentators. Read the rest of this entry →

The following story first appeared in the San Francisco Chonicle, a bourgeois news source, and as such should be taken witha grain of salt.

Aoki is well known for having joined the Black Panther Party nearly from its inception, and was eventually promoted to the position of Field Marshall. While he was only one of several Asian-Americans in the Black Panther Party, Aoki was the only one to have a formal leadership position.

The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training – which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s – was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report.

One of the Bay Area’s most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers, whose members received international notoriety for brandishing weapons during patrols of the Oakland police and a protest at the state Capitol.

Aoki went on to work for 25 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator at the Peralta Community College District, and after his suicide in 2009, he was revered as a fearless radical. Read the rest of this entry →